09.03.2022

Not to be missed

Meet you at Mercanteinfiera, Parma, Italy

Coming up in the next few days is a truly unmissable event, Mercanteinfiera. The fair showcasing the largest selection of modern, antique and vintage furniture, returns from 12 to 20 March at Fiere di Parma, Italy.

This is the ultimate trade show for art lovers and people with great taste, and a unique opportunity to meet sellers, buyers and collectors of modern and antiques from all over the world. The 26th edition of Mercanteinfiera returns from March 12th to March 20th at Fiere di Parma, confirming itself as the most relevant appointment in the field of vintage furniture and collectibles in Europe.

An opportunity not to be missed for those looking for rare pieces of historical or industrial design, vintage apparel and fine antique items, but also an ideal time to learn about new trends and find a unique piece for the home or your wardrobe. 

The spring 2022 edition is a very rich one, with 1000 exhibitors hosted in the 4 pavilions of the fair, for a total area of forty thousand square metres of exhibition space, all dedicated to unmissable treasures. It is impossible to list all the names on the stands, just think that four centuries of art and design history will be presented in Parma.  

Two focus exhibitions will bring additional interest to this Mercanteinfiera: "Olivetti #StoriadiInnovazione", an exhibition organized in collaboration with the Associazione Archivio Storico Olivetti di Ivrea, and "Partivano i bastimenti. Home sweet home America" with period objects that tell the stories of yesterday's migrations.

In the first exhibition, following a path divided into three stages - typewriters, calculating machines, PC printers and cash registers - the public can follow a reflection on Adriano Olivetti's view of design. Among the models on display is the Lettera 22, designed for Olivetti by the architect Marcello Nizzoli and used by great journalists and writers such as Indro Montanelli, Oriana Fallaci, Enzo Biagi, Gianni Mura and Ernest Hemingway. This project was phrased by the  advertisements of the time with this motto: "Light as a syllable, and as complete as a sentence".

The second exhibition displays stories about the journey of Italian migrants who in the early 1900s embarked for America with the great companies: Navigazione Generale Italiana, Lloyd Italiano, Fabre Line, to name but a few.

Posters of the elegant fumigant ships sent monthly to the curial offices and municipal offices, are flanked by advertisements for Italian products that were already the symbol of a pioneering "Made in Italy". Suggestive family photos framed between the two flags, a seal of integration in the New World, are laid over the shoo-in stool, the humble tool used by many Italians at the time. And then there are rosettes, Ellis Island health cards, a crucial point that defined the beginning or the end of the American dream, and, of course, the melancholic music of a now distant homeland.

This year’s Mercanteinfiera brings yesterday's treasures and stories back to the present with uncommon brilliance and it's an event that you shouldn’t miss.

We will be there, come and visit us at Hall 4 Stand D026.